It’s the time of year for the Japanese schools to host their festivals or fairs or whatever and open their stalls and whatnot. At least, at the time this episode of Food for the Soul takes place. Look, I’m an American who grew up around anime and manga. That’s not the same as someone who was literally born and raised in Japan. I don’t think just watching anime will give me enough clues about the culture to make good calls. At the very least, it’s after their summer break! Woo! Okay, now let’s jump into the fun!
The episode begins with Mako and Shinon seeing the clerk, with the clerk notifying them of the upcoming fair-thing, and asking if they plan on opening a booth there. And after some discussion, the group decides “you know what? Let’s open up a booth!”, and so the group decides to begin planning. We have our usual teams of Kurea and Mako being our cooks, Tsutuji and Nana having the job of logistics, and Shinon being the special coordinator…plus taste-tester. Because of course she would make herself a taste tester.
They end up deciding that they’re going to do curry for their food stall, but after they do it as per usual…they realize that it’s not special enough to be used for an event like this. So, of course, afterward, Mako decides to watch some Mokotaro to see how she could spice up the curry. She finds a video where Mokotaro tries something called “Pretty Curry” (which I will die on the hill of “this is a reference to Pretty Cure”, because it’s just way too perfect to NOT be a Pretty Cure reference), and realizes she doesn’t need it to stand out as much as the Pretty Curry does.
Shinon has a plan on that front, though, and Sakura lets them use vegetables from the agricultural club. Of course, there’s automatically the suspicion that Sakura’s going to ask them to do a task in return…but that appears to not be the case, thankfully.
Of course, when they need to figure out where to get meat, Sakura shows them a rest stop where they can buy wild game, which the crew ends up deciding to use in their curry to make wild game soup curry. Nice.
While that is happening, we see Tsutuji helping Nana with talking to strangers by trying to get her to talk to strangers on the campus of the university. While Nana struggles with this at first, she finds out that if she covers her head, she can talk confidently, which gives Tsutuji an idea for the festival/fair/whatever.
But afterward, the crew decides to make a test batch just to taste if the curry they want to make is good…and it is! But the only way to determine for absolute certainty whether or not it’s actually the case? Sell it at the stall, of course!
The day of, they get the stall all set up and the curry cooking, and once the stall is open, Mako’s already down that there’s no customers…with her just needing a reminder that they just opened. And then comes…the promo team! …aka Tsutuji, Nana, and Shinon.
Tsutuji is wearing her hoodie/jacket/whatever in the form that makes it look like a sheep, Nana is in a cardboard suit that looks like a bunny, and Shinon…is Shinon. Then again, why should we expect anything less? With flyers in hand, the three go and promote the stall.
This promotion works extremely well, and the club ends up selling out of the curry…even going through the ingredients intended for the second day on day one. This also includes serving curry to the clerk. Honestly, I found that part to be nice.
After selling out, the crew decide “yup, we’re closing up shop” and take the stall down, with Nana going to change out of her suit…and seeing Mokotaro. For a bit of context, earlier in the episode (IF I REMEMBER CORRECTLY), Mako wished that Mokotaro could visit her university to have her curry.
There’s also a post-credits scene where Mako notices that Mokotaro had uploaded a new video, and decides to watch it…to find out that Mokotaro had the club’s curry and liked it. To be honest, I was thinking they would save this for a pre-intro scene for the next episode, but I’m proud to say that I’ve been proven wrong.
Yet again, this was a fun episode. Honestly, it feels so good to be watching a cute girls doing cute things show that doesn’t take a dive into the realm of character dramas. These aren’t bad (why would I like Stardust Telepath if they were?), but you just need a breath of calm every once in a while, and this is that breath of calm for me. Honestly, I’m glad that I’ve stuck with this show for so long. Just watching these girls cook is so fun, and it’s been a nice way to wind down. Can’t wait for the rest.
ADDITIONAL POSTS ABOUT FOOD FOR THE SOUL:
Sara Talks Anime 
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